(SERAS) Southeast Review of Asian Studies

Volume 35 (2013): 90-102

The Disclosure of akti in Aesthetics:

Remarks on the Relation of
Abhinavaguptas Poetics and Nondual
Kashmiri aivism
DAVID PETER LAWRENCE
University of North Dakota
This essay offers observations and suggestions on how the Kashmiri thinker
Abhinavagupta (c. 950-1020 CE) understood the relation of his aesthetics on the one
hand, and his nondual, tantric Saiva philosophical and religious theories, on the
other. 1 Endeavoring to interpret Abhinava's writings in the different areas as
expressions of a broadly cohesive intellectual system, the paper focuses particularly
on Abhinava's reformulations of nandavardhana's theory of the suggestion (dhvani)
of aesthetic sentiments (rasa) by the formal structures of literature, and Bhaa
Nyaka's conception of aesthetic sentiments as universalizations (sdhrakaraa) of
ordinary human emotions. It argues that Abhinavagupta overcodes these and related
poetic modus operandi, or conceives them as replicating, the nondual aiva myth
and rituals of iva emanating and controlling the universe through his power and
consort akti. As with other codes for the overarching mythico-ritual process, for
Abhinava the aesthetic performance and experience leads the adept towards identity
with iva by disclosing his or her possession of his immanent akti.

visargaaktiry ambho settha sarvatra vartate.

tata eva samastoyamnandarasavibhrama
tathhi madhure gte spare v candandike.
mdhyasthyavigame ysau hdaye spandamnat
nandaakti saivokt yata sahdayo jana.
Abhinavagupta, Tantrloka 3.208b-210 (Dwivedi and Rastogi
1987, 2:551-552)

An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Annual Meeting of the
Dharma Association of North America in San Diego November 2007. I have been
benefited over the years by helpful advice and suggestions on this subject from
Navjivan Rastogi, Hemendra Nath Chakravarty, Kailash Pati Tripathi and
Sthaneshwar Timalsina.

The Disclosure of akti in Aesthetics

91

My research specialty is in the Pratyabhij philosophy of

Abhinavagupta and his predecessor Utpaladeva, and related areas of
non-dual Kashmiri aivism and tantra. Actually, I first became
interested in these traditions through studying Hindu poetics with
Edwin Gerow in the early 1980's, and researching further its religious
and philosophical backgrounds. Since then, though not doing much
research focusing primarily on Abhinavas poetic writings, it has
become increasingly evident to me that his Pratyabhij commentaries
and symbolic-ritual writings such as the Tantrloka and
Partrikvivaraa, provide important clues to what is happening in his
aesthetics.
Recently, I have returned to Abhinavaguptas aesthetics in
formulating the brief remarks for this essay, which I wish further to
elaborate in the future. This has led me to a renewed appreciation of the
integrity and complexity of Sanskrit poetics. I hope these comments and
suggestions will make some small contribution to the growing body of
work on the relations of Abhinavas aesthetics to religion and
philosophy by scholars such as Kanti Chandra Pandey (1963, 1972),
Navjivan Rastogi (2013), Raniero Gnoli (1968), J.L. Masson and M.V.
Patwardhan (1969, 1970), Ingalls (Ingalls, Masson and Patwardhan
1990), Edwin Gerow (Gerow and Aklujkar 1972, Gerow 1994), Gerald
James Larson (1974, 1976), Donna Wulff (1986), Priyawat Kuanpoonpol
(1991), K.D. Tripathi (1995), Bettina Baumer (1997) and others.
Though none of the sets of Abhinavaguptas writings provides a
simple magical key to the othersit has become ever more clear to me
that Abhinava gives philosophical and symbolic-ritual frameworks a
primacy within his corpus. When his works are approached as
expressions of a broadly cohesive system, it is evident that he subsumed
aesthetic enjoyment within basic non-dual aiva mythic and ritual
structures, although the latter in certain ways incorporate aesthetic
theories. My remarks here will focus particularly on Abhinavaguptas
understandings of poetic suggestion (dhvani) and the universalization
(sdhrakaraa) of emotions, though I will briefly mention some other
topics.
Non-dual Kashmiri aivism and the Overarching Tantric Quest for
Divine Power
Now, in contemporary scholarship from Sir John Woodroffe through
Gopinath Kaviraj, Alexis Sanderson and David White, one of the most
definitive characteristics of what is called "tantra," is the pursuit of
power. The theological designation for the essence of such power is of
course akti--a concept of the Goddess with complex textual and

92 D. Lawrence
popular roots (Woodroffe 1981; Kaviraj 1963; Chakravarty 1997;
Sanderson 1985; White 2000, 7-9; Lawrence 1999, 53-65; Lawrence
2008a, 3-19; Flood 2004, 95-103).
The manifestations of akti pursued by the practitioners of tantra
vary greatly, from limited magical proficiencies (siddhis or vibhtis),
through royal power, to the liberated saint's omnipotence of performing
the divine cosmic acts. Sanderson and others have elucidated the ways
in which the tantric pursuit of such power transgresses mainstream,
orthoprax Hindu norms regarding caste, sexuality, diet and death that
delimit agency for the sake of symbolic and ritual purity (uddhi) (1985).
White has argued that the tantric quest for power originated in siddha
practices that endeavored to gain benefits from yogins through the
offering and ingestion of sexual fluids (2003).
As the appellation "non-dual aivism" suggests, in this stream of
tantra akti is encompassed by or, as Sanderson would say, "overcoded"
within the metaphysical essence of the God iva. iva is the aktiman,
"possessor of akti," encompassing her within his androgynous nature as
his integral power and consort. According to the predominant non-dual
aiva myth, he out of a kind of play divides himself from akti and then
in sexual union emanates, embodies himself within, and controls the
universe through her.
The basic pattern of practice, which reflects the mythic-cumhistorical appropriation of ktism by aivism, is the approach to iva
through akti. As the Vijna Bhairava says, akti is the door or face
(mukha) of iva. One pursues identification with iva as the aktiman by
assuming his mythic agency in emanating and controlling the universe
through akti. Thus, in the sexual ritual a man realizes himself as the
possessor of akti immanent within his partner. In Krama tantra one
contemplates oneself as the possessor of akticakras, circles of aktis. The
Spanda Kriks pursue the engrossment of akticakras understood as
Spanda, "Creative Vibration."
Within the historical elaboration of non-dual aiva theology, a great
number of reciprocally encompassing codes, and codes of codes (if A=B
and B=C, then A=C, and so on), were propounded for the same mythic
and ritual process in terms of mantras, maalas, and theosophical and
philosophical contemplations. In her study of the hermeneutics of the
great 20th century tantric adept, exegete and philosopher, Gopinath
Kaviraj, Arlene Mazak has referred to this reiteration of underlying
accounts as patterns of structural replication (Mazak 1994, 328-372,
perhaps repeating or replicating in a different interpretive framework
Levi-Strauss well-known conception of the repetition of mythic
structures, 1955, 443).

The Disclosure of akti in Aesthetics

93

What Mazak describes is actually found in numerous varieties of

Hindu hermeneutics and is common in tantra. Building upon
Utpaladeva and other predecessors, Abhinavagupta expressly engages
every area of inquiry in terms of its distinctive requirements, while
nevertheless endeavoring to justify the replication in it of the mythicoritual drama of iva-akti, and conversely to reinterpret that drama with
the codes of a new replication.
The Pratyabhij philosophy of Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta
thus replicates in terms of straic philosophy the mythico-ritual modus
operandi of the disclosure of ivas akti (aktyvikaraa).2 To address a
variety of philosophical problematics, the Pratyabhij thinkers
interpret akti epistemologically as self-recognition or recognitive
synthesis (ahampratyavamara, pratyabhij, anusadhna), identified
with the principle Supreme Speech (parvk) derived from Bharthari;
and interpret akti ontologically as universal creative agency (karttva,
svtantrya) (Lawrence 1999). Abhinava also develops a correlative
philosophical hermeneutics of grammatical persons, in which the
discursive audience and all discursive referents are reduced to iva as
agent of the universal speech act indexed by the first person (uttama
purua) (Lawrence 2008b). The student learns to participate in ivas
enjoyment of akti as self-recognition/Speech/agency/discursive agency,
by contemplating her as the reality underlying all immanent
experiences, and objects of experience or discourse.
The importance of akti to Abhinavagupta's aesthetics was observed
by Pandey in his Comparative Aesthetics (1972, 1:103-104). Larson, in his
article on "The Sources of akti in Abhinavagupta's Kmr aivism"
(1974) acknowledged the tantras and gamas as a background, but
primarily discussed the Vedas, Vykaraa and poetics. Rastogi also has
recently been studying this issue.
The symbiosis of tantra with aesthetics (as with Vykaraa and
other philosophical theories) actually predates Abhinavagupta, and is
evinced in texts such as the Vijna Bhairava and iva Stra,
nandavardhanas poetics and even Utpaladevas Pratyabhij theories
(Rastogi 2013) and devotional poetry (Stainton 2013). Sanderson (1985,
1988), Biernacki (1999) and White (2003, especially 219-257) variously
interpret the broader philosophical rationalization of tantra, along with
its assimilation to aesthetics, as expressions of a historical
"domestication" of tantric transgressiveness by brahmanical culture.3

2
While Abhinavagupta thematizes this process in the more intellectually
contemplative kta upya, it characterizes all his means-types.
3
See Timalsina 2007 for a contemporary critical effort to apply poetics to the
interpretation of tantra.

94 D. Lawrence
The effort historically and philosophically to sort out the
interweaving strands of tantric symbolism and ritual, prama stra,
and sahitya stra, involves one in a complicated dialectics of many
replicated chickens and eggs. In the remainder of this essay, I will
observe ways in which Abhinava structures central concepts in his
aestheticsparticularly,
suggestion
and
universalization--with
overarching codes for the disclosure of akti.
Suggestion and Intuition
Abhinavagupta's elaboration of the ninth century Kashmiri,
nandavardhana's theory of the suggestion (dhvani) of rasas by the
formal structures of literature has been more widely discussed; hence, I
will say less about it. nandavardhana's concept of suggestion is itself an
elaboration of the linguistic philosopher Bharthari's semantics of
manifestation (sphoa) and intuition (pratibh) by which linguistic usage
accesses the transcendental unity of signifiers and signifieds in the
Word Absolute (abdabrahman) (on the concept of pratibh, see Kaviraj
1966; on the development by Abhinavagupta, see Kuanpoonpol, 1991).4
Bharthari already invokes a conception of akti to describe the Word
Absolute's emanation of fragmented words and objects, as well as
subsidiary modes of linguistic meaning. Gaurinath Shastri (1959) and
others have speculated that in Bharthari's thought there was already an
influence of early tantric as well as Vedic traditions.
The foundational character of akti for nandavardhana is
indicated by his own hymn to the Goddess, Devataka (see Ingalls
1989). In the Dhvanyloka, nandavardhana affirms that the Goddess
Sarasvat inspires the poet with pratibh and a flowing of sweet things,
and Abhinava interprets Sarasvat as having the form of Speech (R.
Tripathi 1975-1981; Ingalls, Masson and Patwardhan 1990). Both
thinkers refer to the skill of the poet as a akti (kaviakti), which
Abhinavagupta further identifies as semantic intuition (pratibhna).
This identification of pratibh with akti is later continued in the
Kvyapraka of Mammaa (Jha 1985) and the different, though still
indebted, Rasagagdhara of Paitarja Jaganntha (Bhanja 2004).
Abhinavagupta frames his own theorization on suggestion within
the Pratyabhij system's reformulation of Bharthari's linguistic holism
and idealism in its conceptions of iva's akti as his self-recognition
(ahampratyavamara), Supreme Speech (parvk) and semantic intuition
(pratibh). In his symbolic-ritual works, Abhinava further develops these

4
nandavardhana also links his theory to processes of recognition in a manner
that provides some background to Abhinavaguptas later synthesis utilizing
Pratyabhij philosophy. See R. Tripathi 1:8, 1:161.

The Disclosure of akti in Aesthetics

95

Pratyabhij conceptions in explaining the essential nature of mantras

and gamas (Lawrence 1999, 85-106; Utpaladeva identifies pratibh with
the Great Lord himself in Torella 2008, 1.7.1, 31; on this, see
Abhinavas commentary in Subramania Iyer and Pandey 1986, 1.7.1,
1:348; Abhinava in Nagar and Joshi 1981-1984, 6, 1:278-279, citing
Kalidsa on memory in akuntal, equates pratibhna with a higher form
of memory; he identifies pratibh with Par Dev in Dwivedi and
Rastogi 1987, 1.2, 2:16). We may say that, within the broad context of
Abhinava's thought, poetic dhvani derives its semantic force from iva's
cosmogonic and soteriological self-recognition and revelatory utterance,
both of which replicate or encode the disclosure of akti. Abhinava
underscores the importance of akti asSpeech to suggestion by
concluding each of the chapters of the Locana with verses praising akti
as constituting each of the four levels of emanating Speech, according to
the Pratyabhij interpretation of Bharthari (R. Tripathi 1975-1981,
1.301, 2.285, 3.524, 3.614).5
Universalization
Another prominent feature of Abhinavagupta's aesthetics is his
development of Bhaa Nyaka's theory of aesthetic sentiments as
universalizations (sdhrakaraa) of ordinary emotions (Pollock 2010;
see the discussion of the grammar below). According to Abhinava,
through sympathetically witnessing the represented feelings of a
narrative character such as Rma, one comes to experience the
sentiments as universalized emotions akin to spiritual bliss,
transcending the identities of individuals in place and time. One also
resolves to act according to the ethical lessons provided by the narrative,
which function analogously to scriptural injunctions. Abhinavagupta
elaborates this theory by formulating linkages between it and diverse
non-dual aiva conceptual and practical codes for the disclosure of
akti.
To review some relevant ideas, we may say that the disclosure of
akti is a contemplative reduction of all items in various spheres to
universal subjectivity, by which these items are further identified with
each other (Lawrence 1999, 51-55, and 61-65; Lawrence 2008a, 32-37).
Pandey (1963, 1972) and Kuanpoonpol (1991) have thus observed
associations between Abhinava's descriptions of the experience of rasa
and the conceptualization of akti as spanda, "creative vibration."
Abhinava describes aesthetic relishing as an immersion in spanda. The

5 This is discussed in Ingalls, Masson and Patwardhan 1990, 200n.5. Cf.

references to the aiva emanated tattvas in Abhinavaguptas benedictory verses to
Nagar and Joshi 1981-1984.

96 D. Lawrence
Spanda stra (Dyczkowski 1987, 1992) propounds a contemplative
transformation of the modes of emanated, particularized cosmic
vibration (vieaspanda) to universal cosmic vibration (smnyaspanda),
which restores its character as the emanatory potency of the Self/iva.
The process of akyvikarana is articulated as an insight informing
speculation and practice, in the Pratyabhij conception of Pure
Wisdom and the related Tantrloka notion of pure reasoning (sattarka)
(Lawrence 1999, 51-55, and 61-65). In these, all forms of objective "this"
are absorbed into the universal "I" in the realization "I am this" (aham
idam). There is no difference between I and you or this and that. In his
Rasdhyya, Abhinava explains the experience of rasas in a very similar
way, in terms of a dissolution (vigalana) of all items of experience into,
or removal of a veil (avaraabhaga) regarding their resting in
consciousness (samvidvirnti, a term also equated with pratibh) (Nagar
and Joshi 1981-1984, 6, 1:260-336; Masson and Patwardhan 1970). He
gives similar explanations of aesthetic sensitivity (sahdayat) in his
varapratyabhijvivtivimarin (M.K. Shastri 1987, 1.5.11, 1:178).
Likewise Abhinava invokes the Pratyabhij rationalizations of
akti as self-recognition in his frequent explanation of processes of
recognitive synthesis (anusadhna) and apperception (anuvyavasya) in
synthesizing the vyabhicarbhvas, anubhvas and sthaybhvas in a
character such as Rma. This is also the case in the very process of the
suggesting and experiencing rasa through the relishing of the
sthaybhavas (see Kuanpoonpol 1991, who describes this in her own
vocabulary).
Teleology of Perfection
A particularly important theme in these bridges Abhinavagupta makes
between aesthetic universalization, and philosophy and symbolic-ritual
exegesis, is his conception of a soteriological, epistemic and
psychological teleology towards the "perfection" or "completeness"
(prat) of the Self as iva, the akti-possessor, containing the
emanated world within himself. Abhinavas theorization on perfection
greatly elaborates the ideas of Utpaladeva and replicates the disclosure
of akti in several contexts. Following Utpala, he frequently describes
soteriological identity as a state of perfect egoity (prhat) and in the
Tantrasra he equates prat with akti herself (M.R. Sastri 1982, 4, 27).
Abhinava and Utpala describe the Pratyabhij epistemological and
ontological reduction of all distinct objects to akti as the
comprehension of them in their perfection or completeness (prat).
Things such as pots and cloths, colors such as red and blue, and
qualities such as high and firm are all thus absorbed into the universal I.

The Disclosure of akti in Aesthetics

97

In his Pratyabhij and symbolic-ritual works, Abhinava further

describes how rival scriptures and their claims are rectified and
harmonized within the prat of the aiva gamas, embodying iva's
perfect self-recognition (on the epistemology of perfection, see Rastogi
1986, Lawrence 2013; on the exegetics, see Lawrence 2000; on the
philosophical psychology, see Lawrence 2008a).6
Abhinava situates tantric sexual and other physical pleasures as well
as aesthetic experiences in the same trajectory. All of our desires arise
out of a sense of incompleteness (aprat). When satisfied, we have a
glimpse of the self-relishing or bliss (svtmsvda, svtmnanda) of the
prat that actually always exists within us. Because of identification
with the limited ego engrossed in mundane contingencies, however, the
sense of incompleteness returns and one again falls into desire for new
things.
Nevertheless, proper meditation on the source of physical
enjoyment, which overcomes the subject-object dichotomy and all
spatiotemporal diversity, is the basis for the ritual approach to
liberation. Abhinava is clear that the same cultivation informs both the
sexual ritual and the relishing of universalized emotions through
aesthetic experience (see the now-paradigmatic discussion in M.K.
Shastri 1987, 1.5.11, 2:177-179).
Further Examples of the Relations between Aesthetic
Universalization and the Transformation of Physical Pleasures
To mention a couple other examples outside the prat scheme, K.D.
Tripathi has indicated the relevance to aesthetic universalization of
Abhinava's discussion of khecarsamat in his Partrikvivaraa.
Khecar is akti understood as moving through the kha, "sky," or "void"
of the Absolute. The vaiamat, "heterogeneity," of akti is the condition
of the disempowered and deluded subject, dichotomized from the
diversity of other people and things. This typifies the condition in
which akti functions ordinarily, as the hedonic "seminal energy" (vrya,
ojas) in various sorts of bodily enjoyment.
Abhinava explains that through the contemplation of akti's
essential nature in the appreciation of beauty, and in sexual and other
forms of pleasure, one has the liberating realization of her samat,
"homogeneity," "sameness," or "universality." This reintegrates the
contents of such experiences as emanations of the Self (K.D. Tripathi
1995).

I understand that Nihar Purohit is writing a Ph.D. dissertation at Banaras

Hindu University on prat.

98 D. Lawrence
Abhinava also articulates linkages between his aesthetics and tantric
thought in his uses of the metaphor of reflection (pratibimba). As I have
explained elsewhere, Abhinava established the contemplation of the
whole universe as one's own reflection, as another basic non-dual aiva
code for the disclosure of akti. In his Tantrloka, Abhinava describes
how participants in the sexual rite known as the congregation of yogins
(yoginmelaka), find immanent media for the reflection of their divine
identity in each other, and thus de-individualize their bodies. He asserts
that the same occurs in the communion of the audience of singing and
dancing (Dwivedi and Rastogi 1987, 28.373-378a, 7:3264-3266;
Lawrence 2005, 596).
The Grammar of Universalization
Abhinava also provides indications of how universalization may be
situated within his linguistic philosophy. He does this by reworking the
semantic theory that Bhaa Nyaka had himself extrapolated from the
Prva Mms conception of the "motivational significance" (bhvan)
of Vedic descriptive statements (arthavda). This explains the audience
reception of universalized emotions and the impulsions to action as
analogous to those conveyed by injunctions (vidhi).
In his Partrikvivaraa, Abhinava propounds a theoretical
contemplation of grammatical persons, correlated to what I have
described as his "mythico-ritual syntax of omnipotence" that privileges
the role of the agent. One contemplates all people and things referred to
in the second and third persons as absorbed into the perfect, aktiemanating, first-person agent. I as the universal enunciator of Speech,
iva, subsume within myself all interlocutors and referents of discourse
(Singh 1989; Lawrence 2008b).
Abhinava in his Pratyabhij commentaries explains, along the
lines of the Mms hermeneutics of bhvan, that when a qualified
person hears Utpaladeva's announcement that he is establishing the
recognition of iva, that person conceives a transference (sakrnti) of it
into a first person perspective in the realization that he or she has
already attained that recognition. Abhinava analogizes this to the firstperson resolution to follow practical advice stated in the second or third
person in the optative or imperative. Our thinker explains in a closely
analogous manner the semantics of aesthetic universalization by
identification with characters such as Rma, and the resolution to act
according to the ethical lessons that they provide. He recounts the same
transference (sakramaa) from a third person to a first person
perspective by which he articulated the aiva agenda of realizing an
empowered, divine first-person egoity (Lawrence 2008b).

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Concluding Reflections
One of Abhinavagupta's favorite maxims, "Everything has the nature of
everything" (sarva sarvtmakam) well describes what is experienced in
attempting to understand the relations of the various areas of his
thought. This makes it difficult both to begin and to end any study of
him. The topics on which I have focused here lead into numerous
others: conceptions of tanmaybhavana, camatkra, sahdayat, virnti,
smaraa, ntarasa (on this concept, see Masson and Patwardhan 1989,
Gerow and Aklujkar 1972, Gerow 1994) and vighnas. Thus, there are
many problems that I have not addressed, including exactly how close
Abhinava believes aesthetic experience can take one to liberation.
Nevertheless, I hope that I have shown some of the ways in which how
Abhinava is over-coding, or replicating within, his aesthetics basic
structures of non-dual aiva symbolism, doctrine and practice.
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